Kathryn Stripling Byer
Kathryn Stripling Byer lives in the mountains of North Carolina where she has served as the state’s Poet Laureate for the past four years. A graduate of the University of North Carolina Greensboro M.F.A. program, she studied with Allen Tate, Fred Chappell, and Robert Watson. Her six collections of poetry include: Wildwood Flower, Black Shawl, Catching Light, and most recently, Coming to Rest, all from Louisiana State University Press. Her work has appeared in journals ranging from The Atlantic to Appalachian Heritage. She has received the Hanes Poetry Award from he Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Southern Independent Booksellers Award for Catching Light, the Lamont (now McLaughlin) Award from the Academy of American Poets for Wildwood Flower, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. Although she is no longer the state’s Poet Laureate, she continues her laureate blog, My Laureate’s Lasso.
